La Colombe finally rolls out Wi-Fi in its Philly cafes
After years of eschewing Wi-Fi, the Philly-based chain started bringing the internet to its stores in September.
Welcome to the internet age, La Colombe. After more than two decades of being staunchly against offering Wi-Fi, the Philadelphia-born coffee shop chain is finally getting connected to the grid.
La Colombe started quietly rolling out Wi-Fi at its local locations in early September, said Semira Sarancic, La Colombe’s head of cafe operations. Wi-Fi is already up and running at the Fishtown flagship cafe, as well as outposts on Independence Mall, by Dilworth Plaza, and in Bryn Mawr. Internet will be coming to La Colombe’s original location, at 130 S. 19th St. in Rittenhouse Square, by the end of 2025.
All in all, roughly 75% of the chain’s 29 locations across New York, Chicago, California, Texas, and D.C. will have Wi-Fi at long last. Only grab-and-go style stores will remain off the grid, Sarancic said, due to their limited seating and smaller square footage.
“There’s no reason for us not to add it,” Sarancic told The Inquirer.
That wasn’t always the prevailing attitude.
Cofounders Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti started La Colombe in 1994 with a single Rittenhouse Square coffee shop, its name a reference to a picturesque cafe in Iberti’s hometown of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. Over time, the company blossomed into a national coffee chain that pioneered the frothy draft latte — now sold on tap and in cans at most major supermarkets.
Chobani purchased La Colombe for $900 million in 2023 and has since infused the coffee chain with millions of dollars to professionalize operations and supersize the lattes.
La Colombe’s vaguely industrial Wi-Fi-free brick-and-mortars were branded as “third spaces,” or places between home and work where you are meant to talk to people, read a book, or do pretty much anything other than park at a table with a laptop to answer emails or take meetings.
“We created our cafes with the intention of providing an environment that enables individuals to either purposefully or accidentally interact with other human beings …,” reads a 2022 entry from La Colombe’s FAQ. “For this reason, many of our cafes do not offer Wi-Fi.”
The company policy has been a perpetual pain point for some customers who bring their laptops anyway and are forced to connect to a hot spot or sip their beverage while focusing on lower-tech work.
Sarancic joined La Colombe in August after more than 25 years of working in coffee shop operations for Starbucks and Foxtrot Café and Market, the Chicago-based boutique coffee shop and grocer that closed abruptly in 2024 after promising a rapid expansion.
Sarancic said her first order of business was adding Wi-Fi to the stores after a close friend begged her to. Already, the change has paid dividends: Sarancic has received positive feedback from baristas who no longer have to awkwardly explain to customers the Wi-Fi situation. And since she spends most of her time visiting stores, Sarancic is able to do her job a bit more easily, too.
“It’s truly a reflection of how our customers live now. They come to our cafes not just for the delicious coffee and food, but to work, and then to maybe relax and recharge,” Sarancic said.
La Colombe is getting online as the coffee industry faces upheaval, with tariffs on coffee producers driving up the cost of beans just as consumers cut back on spending. In September, La Colombe competitor Starbucks went through another round of layoffs as it closed hundreds of U.S. locations — including six in Philly — to stave off more profit losses.
The closures came as Starbucks is rebranding to feel less like a behemoth and more like a local coffee shop, bringing back ceramic mugs and free refills while ending its open-door policy. The international chain is also rolling out a new store design with more seating.
Sarancic has her own wish list for improvements to La Colombe locations (like more space between entrances and registers to stop bottlenecks), but she is unconcerned about her former employer taking La Colombe’s third place leftovers.
“I spent 20 years with [Starbucks] and I truly believed they were No. 1 provider of that third place experience. Now everything has changed,” she said. “I truly believe that La Colombe is so special and unique because no matter what’s happening outside the world, we never change who we are.”
Save for finally turning the Wi-Fi on, of course.